Most of the shelves were bare at Hassan Abu Shabab's convenience store in the center of Khan Younis, a town in southern Gaza whose population has ballooned as tens of thousands of people displaced from the Israeli-encircled north have arrived.
A few bottles of cooking oil and cans of tomatoes were left on one shelf. Other than those, there were only sweets, toilet paper, washing-up liquid and a few other random, nonedible items. No bread, flour, sugar, rice, meat or cheese. Outside, two refrigerators normally stocked with sodas were empty.
"Before the war, we used to sell goods worth about 1,000 shekels ($260) a day. Today, we have nothing to sell. People have money, but there is nothing we can sell them," said Abu Shabab, standing in the emptied store on Monday.
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